How long until transfers to the big servers return?

[SomeRandomHuman]

Honestly I see it as a good chance to start a new place for role-play and such. If a FC were to fully pack up and move together to a new server they might even be able to collectively buy a mansion and build up a good foundation within the first day or so, split up the items they can take, shove em in retainers and practically move house. Yet I do agree, a server that is basically tearing at the seams because of population needs to remain locked.

Some people just want everything based around them. Namely everyone that's saying "I want to play with my friends" and/or "I'm too invested to move" while wanting the server unlocked.

They're too selfish to realize that those two servers alone have crashed or otherwise broke the whole aether data center several times and inconvenienced everyone in the whole center. Do they care? Nope. All they care about is everything being convenient for them.

[DevilsDontFly]

To be honest I feel like it's only a matter of time until they add cross-server friendslist, which will inevitably lead to cross-server linkshells and free companies. Though it's not the same as having the person on the same map you are outside duties, I do feel like eventually we'll be allowed to visit other worlds with our characters as "guests" (as in going to a different server but not being able to use it's markets or trade with players) and our "home" world will be just for the housing and market preferences.

They hinted a couple times on interviews an interest on cross server activities such as linkshells and free companies. It might suck to have blocked servers now, but I have the feeling it won't be an issue in the (near??) future.

[Zojha]

It might suck to have blocked servers now, but I have the feeling it won't be an issue in the (near??) future.

Well, they could just pull a Guild Wars and let you allow to log into any server with any character - And to solve the issue of duplicate names, you put the server name behind the regular name when not on the native server and the name is taken on the target server.

But then again, how would they gain money from server transfers then? Nah. They're gonna do it differently.

[ExKage]

As of the recent ffxivcensus.com numbers for active players (May 2017), these are the numbers for the 6 closed worlds, their data centers, and the EU data center (CHAOS).


Note: I've contacted the owners of ffxivcensus.com. Atomos has 0 as there was a 0 for the population so it doesn't appear as Atomos had a typo on the webowners' end. Hopefully Atomos' population will appear in June 2017 census.

EU Data Center (CHAOS) - Getting additional new worlds: Cerberus (11k), Lich (6.8k), Moogle (10k), Odin (11k), Phoenix (10k), Ragnarok (11k), Shiva 10.8k), and Zodiark (7k). "All worlds on the EU Data center are presently experiencing high levels of player congestion" which most likely points to a number of around 7k.

Japanese Data Centers (worlds getting suspended transfers and character creation): Elemental’s Tonberry is not making as much issue as it is 11k but the active character populations of the data center are very uniform. Gaia’s Bahamut is over 11k and it is a more contrasting bump to the rest of the worlds so there is much more room for people to move. Mana has 3 ‘spikes’ in the 3 worlds it has closed off (Chocobo -12k, Mandragora - 10k, and Shinryu 12k).

North American Data Centers (worlds getting suspended transfers and character creation): Aether has closed Balmung (18k) and Gilgamesh (16k) while the other worlds are much much lower. The next world higher active populations are in either Sargatanas or Cactuar (8.5k). The lowest worlds have active populations around 2.5k and 3.5k. 7k compared to 18k? Or 16k? Yeah. Um. Not happening soon.

[Vidu]

Well, they could just pull a Guild Wars and let you allow to log into any server with any character - And to solve the issue of duplicate names, you put the server name behind the regular name when not on the native server and the name is taken on the target server.

But then again, how would they gain money from server transfers then? Nah. They're gonna do it differently.

Not meant as an attack or anything, but how exactly would that solve the problem? If the whole argument about wanting the server unlocked again is to give other people access to the "community" you have on Balmung, I cant see how allowing this server-flux would help to have less people on Balmung? Wouldnt it even be more people logging onto Balmung/Gilgamesh/other high populated servers, now that they can? And if the servers can only handle so many people at once, wouldnt that lead to even more server-crashes, long loadingtimes, NPCs getting burried in PCs?
It also sounds a bit like an... impractical solution for the single player aswell - if I want to check if my friends are online, I currently log into my character, check my friendslist and can then determine whos around and who isnt - with this solution I would have to check several servers, right? Or even if I get a menu to check across servers for certain non-instanced stuff, I'd still have to gather all of them on ONE server.

I've never played GW and maybe that solution works great there, but I do believe that a lot of times a solution works in one game because it was designed with that solution in mind - unless I missunderstand how this is working, I cant imagine it in FFXIV. Seems rather inconvenient and wont help to decrease the active population on the overpopulated servers, quite the contarary. Looking at all those replies here, one thing becomes perfectly clear: A lot of Balmung people arent willing to leave and there are also still people who'd like to get into a server that is just completly stuffed. If they cant move together, why would they log into a different server together? The number of active players would only rise with this "solution" and would do more harm than good. I mean, after all the problem isnt the amount of characters created on the world, but those that are actually active - a character thats created but never used shouldnt put any stress on the server, a logged in one does.

[ErikMynhier]

As I go down this thread I'm reminded how lucky I am that I decided to get off my but an move all my alts here when I did. I have my RP main on Bal sure, but I had a raider, a main crafter, and a few play around types that were well spaced among 4 other servers. In march I just figured BAL was diverse enough and just decided to consolidate all together. Sold my homes, bought some allagen coins and things and moved them all over.


EDIT: Before panties are wadded, I sold my homes by letting their timers run out and got my money back.

[Hasrat]

While the "come to Mateus! :)" posts come from good intentions, I don't see a significant number of rpers taking them up on their offer. Mateus is entirely too dead to be a tempting reason to leave the biggest server.

Anecdotal evidence, but I've seen a bit of an uptick in population growth recently, and definitely an increase in RP crowns floating around. No competition for a big server or anything, I imagine, but still, not as dead as it was when I started.

[Zojha]

Not meant as an attack or anything, but how exactly would that solve the problem?

You wouldn't lose anything when logging into another server, much unlike transferring. That's one of the main deterrents why people don't want to move off - You lose house, gil, contacts etc. If you could just log into any server freely, you can just spontaneously decide that your FC will play on Mateus that day to circumvent congestion queues and then the entire FC will play on that server that day. If you lose your friends, house, gil etc in the process, nobody's gonna go elsewhere, people will take the queue instead. Even if it's a queue of 3000. If they could log freely? They'd see 3000 and would just log elsewhere until the queues are lower and their FC and friends would as well because why not? It's easy, free, convenient and once things have slowed down, they can log into their other server again. That greatly helps fighting the congestion issue during high activity times.

Likewise, if there's an RP event planned, you can just go:"And if Balmung is congested, we'll hold it on Server X that day instead." And everyone who wanted to participate can follow. Right now? Not possible. The event makers and the players all need to have characters on the same server. And this isn't a very alt-friendly game. Similar goes if you want to play with friends on a different server without sacrificing the friends you already have. And while cross-server technology can help doing instanced content together, sharing the same worldspace is still important.

As for the friend list, it would ideally remain similar as now. You'd have your list and it would show the name of the character, which world he's native to and which world he's currently playing on.

The main issue with that solution is confusion - You'd have lots of duplicate names with their unique server tags to keep them intact, something GW2 solved by requiring a unique name across all servers, which isn't do-able here anymore. But with cross-world technology, that's pretty much what happens anyway, because cross-world technology has to do the exact same thing. If you join such a group, it already does show name and server. And cross-server friendlist will have to do the same when it comes.

It cannot help that some servers are more popular than others of course. But it does greatly help the issue with overlong queue times during events and the servers crashing due to overload, because the higher the congestion, the more inclined people will be to temporarily evade elsewhere so they can actually play. Or even permanently, if they happen to find cool people elsewhere in the process.


That all said: As EU player, the highest queue I get on Balmung during my time tends to be a few seconds long. Even during the last housing rush, I could get online in only 5 minutes. And I have an alt on EU servers for latency issues. The topic doesn't concern me personally. I just think that their current approach is ineffective.

[Dyvid]

RP community won't do that, no point. Would have to be a second RP community not on balmung gathering on a server for that to happen. Sqaure designating a server would speed up the process.

Well I guess you're screwed then. The RP Community can either brave the crossing to a new server, to create a new settlement or stay in the highly dense Metropolis that can't support anymore more members.

[Edewen]

The transfers wont come back until the large servers depopulate. The large servers probably wont depopulate until the following things are met.

1. Data center wide market boards: The large servers have more stable and cheaper economies. Easier to play when you don't need to farm it yourself.
2. Cross server friends lists: Talk to your friends across the data center
3. Cross server world grouping: Join your friends across the data center to do hunts on any server. *this would require a much more rigid spawn schedule not affected by kill times and possibly a daily lockout on killing a hunt mob*

The large servers still have more going for them which is why people keep asking when transfers are coming back. Not enough has been done to take away the advantage for the population to want to spread.