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

[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

[Lufir]

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.

I was actually thinking about this. This is probably the most fair method. Everyone has a timer and at X hour mark boot people who have been playing and let the queue move along. Once they see congestion die down, remove this timer.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

A delay would have done nothing.

They literally cannot get more server infrastructure atm due to the severe semi-conductor and chip shortages.

[Niecho]

I know many-- myself included-- who have been actively, routinely, and diligently trying to get into the game for more than four hours straight; my wife tried for nearly five hours straight. People are using different tricks to avoid being booted, even moreso now than before during the pre-release. And honestly, I think if you're caught using those strategies, it should be MUCH heavier than a slap on the wrist and a 1-3 day ban. With people spending hours trying to get in and another person doing such dishonorable things so they can go to the store, tend to personal matters such as showering, cooking, eating, catching a tv show, etc JUST so they can go right back into game without a hitch is grossly inconsiderate to others. Personally, I'd recommend a 7-day ban minimum. They know it's wrong, and they do it anyway. A few of those, especially during an event like the pre-release of a well-anticipated expansion, could seriously diminish that behavior. People need to know there are repercussions and that those repercussions will be enforced.

[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.

[Reaperking386]

You could just also delay it yourself. I mean it is not like you have to play it on early release or launch day.

[Moonlite]

This forum is not an accurate representation of the player base. Consider also that the players that get through the queue are more likely to be playing the game, while players still in queue have nothing else to do but come here and complain, further skewing perception that the game is "unplayable."

Think SE is going to release the data on average time spent in que and how many times their server 2k2ed someone? If everyone posted their success rate of not getting 2k2 if que was over 1k and how many worlds are hitting 1k que in prime time. I would think the number of people who can't play is even larger. They only have so much room at the table/server. They have clearly acknowledge they are way over that. You don't think it would be silly to think the number is smaller. More then likely some people keep quiet, some people give, and some people vent elsewhere then forums. Since we all know how well forums work.

A delay would have done nothing.

They literally cannot get more server infrastructure atm due to the severe semi-conductor and chip shortages.

They could work on how the login server handles dropped players. Except they knew this error existed before and said "if you get error stop trying" But I am sure covid and supply shortages prevented them from working on a known flaw in the system. I been here since 1.0 and had never heard the login server has a cap of 17k and will just dump you.

[hynaku]

They should have delayed it and only add small parts to it. I think the chip shortage will be over by next year since read some big companies is going to start amking them Like Tesla.

[SnowVix]

They should have delayed it and only add small parts to it. I think the chip shortage will be over by next year since read some big companies is going to start amking them Like Tesla.

Delay an expansion by a whole year? The playerbase had a full on tantrum over ultimate being delayed to 6.1, then add an extra year to that?

[OldSalty]

they could have done a bit more. I cannot speak for ever server. But the log in queue usually is about 30- 60 on my server. But all of a sudden its over 5000. Spend the couple extra bucks and install a few more servers and link them up and let them help with the load.