Logout Measures

[Talraen]

Prior to the launch of Stormblood queues were not a problem on Balmung. While there were sometimes a login queue it was never longer than a couple of minutes.
I.e. it was not at all obvious that things would get this bad.

Perhaps it wasn't obvious, but it was inevitable. If everyone flocks to one server, that server will eventually become too crowded. There's no other possible way that ends.

And the truth is, these queues won't last forever. They're not the consequence people need to worry about. The real problem with Balmung is that it's an RP community that can never get any new players. And I use "never" there literally - as long as people want to go to Balmung for RP, it will never be opened (or if it is, it'll be re-closed very quickly). The very idea of the server is not tenable.

If someone was hosting 30 parties, but only one of them had music, where do you think most people go? Balmung was touted as THE only option for RPers for so long. For many players, a queue & transfer fee were a small price to pay for actually enjoying the game. It makes perfect sense for people to go there.

But blaming players "100%" is also blaming them for there not being a fix to this a long time ago. Yes, people chose to go there, but blaming the players entirely for the current problem is like blaming the patrons on the Titanic for there not being enough life boats.

When that party got too crowded for anyone else to get in, presumably someone would start another party. And I remind you that Balmung was touted as the RP server by players. This doesn't shift the blame to anyone else.

The passengers on the Titanic weren't responsible for it sinking. It didn't sink because it was overcrowded. Your analogy doesn't apply here at all.

A better analogy would be if the fire department posted the capacity for a party venue, and people ignored it. They kept warning the people it was overcrowded (in the form of character restrictions) until the problem got so bad that they just had to stop letting anyone into the building at all. Is the party's overcrowding then the fire department's fault? No, though they could have stopped it.

And here's the thing: if the players' goal is to have one RP server, and Square Enix's response is not allowing new characters to be created there, have they actually "solved" the problem? It seems to me that not being able to make new characters is itself a major problem. The symptoms have changed, but the problem remains. What has actually been solved?

True, which is exactly why people are trying to establish RP communities on additional servers - mainly on Mateus (NA) and Omega (EU).

Which is great, but they should have done that months if not years ago. Balmung has been overcrowded for a very long time (again, character creation restrictions show that pretty clearly), but no one was inclined to solve the problem until they were forced to. Also, I wish the Mateus decision had been made before I decided to move here.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I think patching actions that circumvent auto log out would be better soluttion.

Perhaps better, but it's a solution that couldn't be ready in time to do any good for the current situation...

You've got the development time to actually make a working system...
And then testing time to make sure it actually works properly, and doesn't break anything...

And, if we're including consoles...
I believe the console manafacturers even have their own testing they have to do, which could add on another week before this fix could even be rolled out to everyone...



It's something that definatly should be done...
But it's not something that can help us out now.

[MistakeNot]

And the truth is, these queues won't last forever. They're not the consequence people need to worry about. The real problem with Balmung is that it's an RP community that can never get any new players. And I use "never" there literally - as long as people want to go to Balmung for RP, it will never be opened (or if it is, it'll be re-closed very quickly). The very idea of the server is not tenable.

True, which is exactly why people are trying to establish RP communities on additional servers - mainly on Mateus (NA) and Omega (EU).

[MistakeNot]

Which is great, but they should have done that months if not years ago. Balmung has been overcrowded for a very long time (again, character creation restrictions show that pretty clearly), but no one was inclined to solve the problem until they were forced to. Also, I wish the Mateus decision had been made before I decided to move here.

Wasn't a real decision as such. There were a small RP community on Mateus even before the total lockdown of Balmung and other servers happened. Some of them took advantage of the opportunity and began to heavily promote their server to the greater RP community. People started moving over there, and soon their small community wasn't so small anymore.


Until the lockdown of Balmung happened there was no real chance of establishing any large RP community on other servers anyway - several attempts have been made over the years with little success[*]. RPers benefit greatly from being on the same server as many other RPers so it was hard to persuade people to go elsewhere. After the lockdown new people HAD to go elsewhere, so suddenly alternatives actually had a chance to grow big enough to become self-sustaining.

[*]At the start of ARR there were actually two unofficial RP servers - Balmung and Gilgamesh. Unfortunately Gilgamesh also became the unofficial raid server and the RP community there began to become somewhat insular (from what I have heard) and started to dwindle.