Daily server resets are one of the only things that will have any significant effect

[Saimeren]

Lmao, imagine waiting hours to play just to finally get on and after 10 mins of play your server resets and now you have to go back in queue, but this time it's double the amount of people?

Yeah, that'll go over well.

Imagine a server reset in the middle of a story cutscene, duty or dungeon?

You think the complaining is bad now. Imagine if Square kicked you out of the game for no reason?

[HyoMinPark]

I was discussing with a friend last night about reasons why they haven’t done the forced log offs yet, and we wondered if they are avoiding it simply because the rush of people attempting to log back in afterwards might negatively affect the already-unstable lobby servers.

They’ve always done announced ones, so it would be easy to set something up to log back in for anyone who plays on PC. I doubt they’d do random ones since that would likely make people even more angry. Imagine finally getting into the game after waiting in a queue for 3-4 hours only to be kicked 10 minutes later with a random log off. Plus, it would interrupt things like people doing the story or people running a dungeon. They’d have no way to preemptively avoid engaging in something like a cutscene or a duty. Random log offs would be like already poking at an agitated hornet’s nest.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I was discussing with a friend last night about reasons why they haven’t done the forced log offs yet, and we wondered if they are avoiding it simply because the rush of people attempting to log back in afterwards might negatively affect the already-unstable lobby servers.

They’ve always done announced ones, so it would be easy to set something up to log back in for anyone who plays on PC. I doubt they’d do random ones since that would likely make people even more angry. Imagine finally getting into the game after waiting in a queue for 3-4 hours only to be kicked 10 minutes later with a random log off. Plus, it would interrupt things like people doing the story or people running a dungeon. They’d have no way to preemptively avoid engaging in something like a cutscene or a duty. Random log offs would be like already poking at an agitated hornet’s nest.

They could announce it like an hour in advance, that ought to be enough time to prepare, and I don't think any cutscenes are that long.

Whether or not it would help any, I don't know. I do know there are a lot of people abusing automation to stay logged in.

[HyoMinPark]

They could announce it like an hour in advance, that ought to be enough time to prepare, and I don't think any cutscenes are that long.

Whether or not it would help any, I don't know. I do know there are a lot of people abusing automation to stay logged in.

If you aren’t in game but waiting in a queue, you aren’t going to see an announcement for it, short of spam-refreshing the Lodestone.

And this still doesn’t change the very likelihood of the unstable lobby server borking out when tens of thousands of players all try to immediately relog at the same time.

The idea would be to get rid of AFKers before the queues start, so probably they would do the reset around noon. I don't think most people are suggesting they do a server reset at 6 pm, and that's not what they did in Stormblood.

They did the force logoffs around 2pm/3pm EST for SB. Queues on NA start hitting the thousands around then as people trickle in from school. By 4pm/5pm EST, they’re already 4,000+ for most Aether servers.

That said, it wouldn’t really address the queue issues on the weekends, where you’re already getting 4,000+ queues around 12pm PST. And again, the integrity of the lobby server is a valid concern. It’s clear they can’t handle the congestion now.

I go to my house to craft and decorate. Crafting is how I make the majority of my income. I spent over a year's worth of sub just to keep my house even though I wasn't logging in more than once a month (to prevent demolition). To take away my house would be a big slap to the face.

Demolition is suspended right now. You don’t need to worry about losing your house.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

If you aren’t in game but waiting in a queue, you aren’t going to see an announcement for it, short of spam-refreshing the Lodestone.

They could probably close connections to the server without disrupting the login queue. Would kick out everyone on the server but not mess things up for people who were waiting to log on.

[HyoMinPark]

They could probably close connections to the server without disrupting the login queue. Would kick out everyone on the server but not mess things up for people who were waiting to log on.

I don’t think they could, since you can’t connect to a server that’s offline. In all likelihood, the shut down would cause those sitting in the queue in the lobby server to just 2002. And I think there are enough of those errors going around without adding more. The masses attempting to reconnect once the servers are live again also increase the risks of 1. Larger queues (especially if they put any of these random logoffs during peak or near-peak hours for a region), and 2. More 2002s. Again: poking at an already agitated hornet’s nest.

[AlexRaines]

If you aren’t in game but waiting in a queue, you aren’t going to see an announcement for it, short of spam-refreshing the Lodestone.

And this still doesn’t change the very likelihood of the unstable lobby server borking out when tens of thousands of players all try to immediately relog at the same time.

This is my main issue with it as well. The other day I logged in and after five minutes after I was in a two hour queue, my world crashed. (Slightly different situation, I know, but result is the same). I wound up having to sit in another queue for another two hours before I could get back in, in addition to the 45 minutes it took for Squeenix to fix the crash. If I had to deal with that as an intentional thing, I think I'd be a heck of a lot more upset than if it happened just the once.

[Chooty]

They did the force logoffs around 2pm/3pm EST for SB. Queues on NA start hitting the thousands around then as people trickle in from school. By 4pm/5pm EST, they’re already 4,000+ for most Aether servers.

That said, it wouldn’t really address the queue issues on the weekends, where you’re already getting 4,000+ queues around 12pm PST. And again, the integrity of the lobby server is a valid concern. It’s clear they can’t handle the congestion now.

So because you can't fix weekend queues, you shouldn't try to fix weekday queues?

[HazyAssaulter]

As an update, it took me over 10 minutes of repeatedly trying to enter my house over and over before I was finally able to get inside? Why could this be? Surely it's not from a bunch of people using out-of-game macros or third party tools, sitting inside their houses all day, bypassing the AFK timer, right?

[HyoMinPark]

So because you can't fix weekend queues, you shouldn't try to fix weekday queues?

That’s not what I said, but okay.

Forced logoffs wouldn’t fix things like weekend queues because more people are free to play then, but they also would not fix prime time login congestion (that’s when most of the 4,000+ queues are happening, and when 2002 errors seem to be the worst). If they opted to do it around the same time, well now you have the 4,000+ already waiting in the queue (who would likely get kicked out of it when the servers are shut off) plus those who were just kicked trying to get back in. The lobby servers are already unstable enough as it is, so how would they hold up against the increased congestion? Not to mention, it would interfere with the schedules of statics since a lot run during the evenings on all data centers, and as much as these forums like to insist the developers don’t care about raiders, they have at least enough respect to not introduce these during a critical time such as early Savage clear/the world race. The developers actually watch world races.

Scheduled logoffs wouldn’t really prevent people from not just logging right back in and going back to what they were doing—including AFKing. So it doesn’t solve that problem for anyone who works from home and can take a break to relog, or who can remote into their computer and relog. So the online congestion wouldn’t go down all that much. The only ones who would be the most affected would be console players, since you can’t remote into a console—but if you’re working from home, easy enough to just log back in and go back to executing your macro.

Implementing random ones would just piss off players that are already as ill as hornets, from kicking them out after they’ve waited in a queue for 2-4 hours and forcing them to do so again, to interrupting those in duties or doing the MSQ. As myself and others have said in this thread.

Tl;dr—the forced logoffs likely wouldn’t help all that much, and might cause more problems in the end.