Should the launch have been delayed? What else could be done?

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

While I know there is nothing to be done, as there is a shortage of chips. It is kinda funny how they had years to upgrade/add servers from mogstation funds. Which was a justification for the cash shop.

You imply that they haven't been updating them.

The issue is that COVID, the shortages, big streamers moving to FF14, and the WoW exodus as well as New World being a failure has caused massive issues. No company can be expected to be able to juggle all that in the same year.

[Sekuharu]

Delaying it for the sake of simply delaying it would have done nothing. Maybe if they had put more thought into it, and taken better steps to prepare for the release day it may have helped.

I expected the long ques, cant really avoid it. I also expected longer wait times, and terrible dungeon ques. I didnt expect to be kicked out of the que from error codes, and have to start back at square one though.

[Kazrah]

Maybe not a delay, but rather a staggered set of early releases. Pick out a random selection of players totaling a specific percentage of the player population and giving them a date for early release access. That way, it'd be less of a load on the servers while reducing the severity of problems caused by player overflow and maybe improving the ability to fix those problems when they pop up rather than have every player logging in and having the login servers repeatedly exploding.

Aside from putting more effort into improving login servers, I'm out of ideas on this one. FFXIV is certainly a game suffering from success right now.

[Phaty]

Maybe not a delay, but rather a staggered set of early releases. Pick out a random selection of players totaling a specific percentage of the player population and giving them a date for early release access. That way, it'd be less of a load on the servers while reducing the severity of problems caused by player overflow and maybe improving the ability to fix those problems when they pop up rather than have every player logging in and having the login servers repeatedly exploding.

Aside from putting more effort into improving login servers, I'm out of ideas on this one. FFXIV is certainly a game suffering from success right now.

You don't need endwalker to log in and play the game. Ppl would still log in to try the class changes and play the marketboard

[Deceptus]

Maybe not a delay, but rather a staggered set of early releases. Pick out a random selection of players totaling a specific percentage of the player population and giving them a date for early release access. That way, it'd be less of a load on the servers while reducing the severity of problems caused by player overflow and maybe improving the ability to fix those problems when they pop up rather than have every player logging in and having the login servers repeatedly exploding.

Aside from putting more effort into improving login servers, I'm out of ideas on this one. FFXIV is certainly a game suffering from success right now.

SWTOR did this on launch. The earlier you pre-ordered the earlier you had access to "early access"

Early access was 3-4 days and a different set of folks could log in on those days depending on how early you pre-ordered.

Essentially staggered the launch

[JTWrenn]

I think bottom line they should have delayed it a month or two, not two weeks. If they did they would have received more servers, not just a few and would have had a better launch. The quality of the game is far more important than the speed of release and I think far fewer people would be mad about a delay caused by covid than a delay that is un equitable...by that I mean some in and some out. Hold it for everyone, because you know the quality is not there is always the better play.

[Maxilor]

Perhaps limit players to X hours of playtime per day. Start at 4 hours then gradually increase, and eventually remove the limit as the initial surge dies down. This would also help to deter AFKers, since going AFK without logging out for a hour means that you've just wasted an hour of your daily limited play time.

Imagine paying a monthly fee for something you can only play in 4 hour increments?

If they even considered doing this, a free month better come with it.

[DevilSeven]

Imagine paying a monthly fee for something you can only play in 4 hour increments?

Imagine paying a monthly fee for something you can't even log in to.

[Havenchild]

Realistically, there are probably some limited options they are exploring now. However they are prioritizing server stability in-game with simultaneous connections, which to give them credit, is EXTREMELY stable with relative no lag. I'd give this a week roughly before they initiate some more measures to mitigate the login issues.
Having said that, there isn't much beyond what we have now, that they could have done, and anyone saying otherwise is just overly butthurt they can't play. They have a right to their opinion as well but I think given all the real world situations between the exceptional hype Shadowbringers brought in, the WoW Exodus, COVID leading into the Supply Chain related delays & the fact that those semi conducters are in extremely high demand, that's enough situations that anyone with a brain can understand, this situation alone can't be placed on SE.

This is the situation where people need to be more understanding on the IT/DEV side of things. My job for example has been trying to grab some physical servers since January for a cutover project and that has made literal 0 progress. You're lucky to find available servers and even beyond that, if you find places with space, you are extorted some ridiculous pricing in the ten thousands+ range sometimes. I wouldn't blame any company for saying hell no to that number, especially since the price increases the more simultaneous connections are needed.

People don't understand IT, that's what boils down to the moronic, definitely vocal minority, of posts on the forums.

This isn't a problem you can really throw money at. If you think Finance will allow that, you REALLY don't understand corporate business.

[Saefinn]

No. They shouldn't.
The problem we're having is a mix of two things:
- Too many players
- Not enough servers

They have reported that they've had the most congestion of any launch. And we know Shadowbringers brought a lot of new players and that WoW's problems also had a lot of people migrate too. So this is why we have so many compared to previous launches.

They cannot get enough servers because of a pandemic and a global issue affecting electronics manufacturers around the world, which is out of Square Enix's control.
I don't see how a delay would solve the problem other than maybe a portion of those players getting fed up of waiting and quitting.

It's not like Cyberpunk where it was released too early.

I'd rather a few rocky days of Early Access - which will go away - than wait until they can get the servers needed to make this a smoother process.